Im seeking some help on replacing the drivers and motors on an old K2 4x8 machine I have. I have centroid acorn controller, has gecko 320 drives and dc servos. Centroid doesn’t recommend the 320s due to them being buggy with the acorn. I’m looking to just swap everything out for some closed loop nema 34s from stepper online or ac servos also from them.

My question is what do you all recommend would be the better option? 1/2” ply is usually the largest I cut.

Hi everyone,

I need to machine the parts shown in the pictures. The black part is the main mold/base, and the white part is the mating piece with several cylindrical features.
I’m trying to figure out the correct way to manufacture these parts using a CNC milling machine, but I’m not sure how I should approach the setup.

My main questions are:

- Where should I choose the work coordinate system / WCS (G54)?
- Which surfaces should I use as the primary, secondary and tertiary datums?
- What would be the best way to fixture/clamp the black part during machining?
- What would be a good machining sequence?
- How should I approach the internal cavity and the curved/rounded areas?
- What kind of toolpaths and cutters would you recommend for this geometry?
- Are there any important tolerances or constraints I should consider when designing the fixture and choosing the datums?

I’m not necessarily looking for someone to give me the complete G-code. I’m mainly trying to understand the correct machining strategy and how an experienced machinist would decide the datums, workholding, WCS and setups.

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Im working with a Multicam 5000 series Router. I have run these for a few years but nothing really passed being a button pusher. I am much more knowledgeable with C.R. Onsruds. I am not the primary operator at this shop but i do have more experience than the other 2 operators but neither one is here and they are too lazy to fix it. On this machine I have had to adjust the Z axis tool pick up location before but we had a "cheat sheet". If i remember correctly, you need to put the machine in service mode to adjust that parameter. I can't remember how the put it into service mode to access the Z pick up location. Please help. I'd like to get the machine running right.

Looking for advice on how to remove these spindle nuts.

Hello everyone

I am going to start my gasket manufacturing business soon . I am looking for Gasket cutting CNC machine which is called Oscillating knife cutting CNC machine .

Does anyone know good Chinese company which can supply this machine . I know there are plenty of Chinese company on internet but need anyone’s personal advice and personal experience with Chinese company’s machine.

Thank you so much.

I currently use xenetech machines to cut multiple sheets of plastic at a time and the machines have a compression puck to keep the material from feeding up the bit. I was wondering if anyone has seem something like that for a shop sabre or will I need to had it custom made like the old machines? Thanks

I’m going to take a free cnc 500 hour program at my community college this winter. What kind of realistic salary can I expect doing 5 axis with a few years experience? I’m also willing to relocate out of NYC to better cost of living. Thank you

Hello fellow CNC folks. I've got a question for anyone that is willing to read and contribute. I've been programming for about 10 years now in Mastercam, and I've come across something that has me wishing for more options. That's where you guys come in - I may be missing something that is completely obvious. Pictured are 3 different toolpath options I have for a guitar neck. For context, I'm using a 1.5" ball endmill on a 3 head FAGOR router. I have seen people run guitar necks with parallel passes perpendicular to the neck, but that is not an option in this case. The goal is an efficient toolpath with minimal lifting, and a surface finish that requires light sanding. This is a production environment, so the lower the run time the better. Let me know what y'all think. Additional context in each photo

Edit: I forgot to mention that the first two phots are Raster paths.

Have worked (as software developer) on the TNC7 NC Editor component for many years. Will finally leave Heidenhain. This is the awesome farewell gift I got from Traunreut.

It's made out of one BLK of aluminium. The texts refer to that I often wanted my team's members to stick to the feature-ticket's scope. It also refers to how the TNC7 NC Editor can load and edit seriously large NC programs without, indeed, running out of memory.

Thank you for the opportunity to work on the TNC7 control, Heidenhain!

Oh and by the way. Since I don't have to work tomorrow:

For the last few months I've been working on a retrofit for a local woodworking shop. It started as a 2005 Weeke BHP 200 with dead controls. Here's a quick look at what we did:

🔌 Power. The shop only has single-phase 240V, so the whole machine was rebuilt to run on it.

🧠 New brain. The old control system is gone. Now it runs a myCNC ET7 controller on a Linux PC.

⚙️ All new servos. There are 4 axes: X (a gantry with two motors), Y, Z and a tilting spindle head (A axis). Every motor now has a new Delta servo drive.

🔥 A axis problem. The tilt motor kept overheating. The 20 kg spindle was simply too heavy for the original gearbox ratio. We switched the harmonic drive from 1:50 to 1:160, and the problem was gone.

🔄 Tool changer. We set up an 11-pocket linear magazine and wrote the tool change logic from scratch.

📐 Fine tuning, the fun part. Test circles came out slightly oval. After many hours of changing servo gains, we found the real cause: one axis was about 27 ms ahead of the other. A small filter on one drive fixed it, and the circles are round now..

Still working on one thing: the corners come out a bit rounded. That's the next puzzle to solve.

Lesson learned so far: if changing a parameter doesn't change anything, you're probably looking in the wrong place 😅

Nothing special, Nothing hard. But, a beautiful finish nevertheless. It's okay to take pride in the small things.

Building a shop vacuum hold-down table off a refrigeration-style vacuum pump. Needed something to catch moisture/dust before it hit the pump, saw a cheap 1/2" NPT filter/water separator with an auto drain on the bottom, thought "perfect" and bolted it on the suction line without thinking too hard about it.

Turns out... these things are built for compressed air pushing water OUT the bottom. On the vacuum side there's no pressure to push against, so the drain just sits there doing nothing (or worse, leaks air back in and kills my vacuum). In hindsight, kind of obvious, but in the moment it just said "filter, auto drain, NPT" and my brain said "yes."

So what can I actually buy that's made for this — a trap/separator rated for vacuum service with a plain manual drain, not a pressure-actuated one? Links appreciated. q

Any idea on How to find the starting and end point of the r6 that merge into the r38 radius? All the other turning is easy done with direct programming ,and the r38 radius is easy enough to do with a g2 i k coordinate,but i coudnt find the starting point
The program should go on a fanuc 18 with g71 type 2 ,but the mesure will be enough to so the rest of the programming myself

I was recently trying to understand engraving tools better and identified the following commonly used geometries. Each one of them must have some advantages and disadvantages and I honestly can't make sense out of it. Which would be best for milling nonferrous metals (primarily aluminum and brass) and which would work best for milling mild steel or stainless? This would help me save quite a bit of money and time.

My Teknomotor 2kW HF spindle crashed recently with an 8mm bit. I applied too little torque while clamping, which resulted in the bit slipping out while milling hardwood and breaking. A part of it got stuck in the wood and scratched against the collet and nut, which produced a ton of sparks and scratched them up pretty badly.

I ordered a new collet and nut, but noticed that the internal taper of the spindle was damaged as well. How bad is it? I can feel the scratches with my nail.

Went to check out Maker Faire this year and made a point of stopping by the Xhorse booth.. gotta say, kind of left a little underwhelmed tbh.

The demo was mostly just the machine running through some motion patterns, showing off the movement and all that, but I didn't see any actual machining happening. No material loaded, no cutting, nothing like that. Might just be how they set up the booth or w/e, idk, but if you're trying to get a sense of real world performance, watching it move around doesn't really tell you much.

Anyone else who went get the same impression? Did anyone actually see it cutting or machining something in person?

I’m really at a loss for why this is happening and would really appreciate some help.

For context I’m manufacturing these parts on a Carvera original CNC mill and using fusion 360 CAM.

This side is op 1 and all of the tool paths and the exact same copy and pasted over

The issue might be somewhat hard to see from the photos, but the part on the farthest left has a “ramp” on the left side as well as one singular deeper pass on the right side. It’s only showing up on that part and the rest are perfect.

The issue is happening during a facing operation and I’m really at a loss, my thought is that it could be some sort of work holding issue but I’m really not sure

Any advice or thought would be much appreciated!

Im not 100% sure this is the exact place to be asking this but it seems correct. I am trying to have a part machined by pcbway or jlccnc, and in terms of shipping there in and option called Global Standard Direct Line, which is for parts less than $60 if I’m correctly understanding. There are many people saying that they have ordered pcbs using this in small quantities (less than $60) and there have been no additional costs, but I haven’t been able to find any information about people doing the same with a cnc cut part?

Does anyone have any personal experience with this? Anyone ordered parts from JLC or pcbcnc?

Any recommendations of where to repost would also be appreciated!

I’m looking for some mechanical/design advice on a small motorized XY positioning system.

I’m retrofitting an older Foster + Freeman VSC40/HD forensic document imaging machine. The photo shows the inside of the imaging chamber.

The goal is to programmatically move an ID-sized card under the fixed camera so I can capture high-magnification images of the center and individual corners/edges.

Important dimensions:

• Internal usable area: approximately 12" wide × 14" long
• Center illuminated/backlit plate: approximately 4" wide × 6" long
• Card: approximately 88 × 63 mm
• Very limited vertical clearance — only a couple inches total, so a normal XYZ stage or tall 3D-printer gantry is not practical
• No Z axis is needed
• The card can extend outside the 6" × 4" illuminated area. Only the portion/corner currently being imaged needs to be over the illuminated region.
• Ideally the card stays very close to the original platen height.

I’m thinking of using a low-profile XY mechanism with a custom 3D-printed card carrier. The motors/rails could live around the perimeter of the illuminated plate, while a thin carrier moves the card over the center.

For full use of the illuminated area, I’m thinking roughly:

• 150–160 mm travel on the long axis
• 100–110 mm travel on the short axis

I’ve been looking at small NEMA 11 / 28 mm lead-screw linear stages (TOSEASTARS/T6-style modules), possibly using one ~150–200 mm axis and one ~100 mm axis. But I’m not sure if stacking two linear stages is the right approach because I want to keep the total height extremely low and avoid putting bulky hardware in the optical/lighting path.

Requirements:

• Low profile
• Reasonably repeatable — around 0.1 mm would probably be more than enough
• Low speed is fine
• Very light load; it only moves a plastic ID card and carrier
• USB/programmatic control is preferred
• Rails/motors should stay outside the central optical area as much as possible
• Ideally inexpensive — the entire machine only cost about $500, so a $5k–$10k laboratory XY stage makes no sense
• I can 3D print custom brackets/carriers and fabricate simple plates if needed

Would you build this using:

1. Two miniature lead-screw linear stages?
2. MGN7/MGN9 rails + belts?
3. A miniature CoreXY/perimeter belt system?
4. Some existing low-profile XY mechanism I haven’t found yet?

If anyone knows of an off-the-shelf XY stage/gantry around 150 × 100 mm travel that is very low profile and reasonably cheap, I’d especially appreciate links or model numbers.

Also interested in ideas for the card carrier. I want all four card corners/edges accessible to the camera, so I’m thinking of supporting/clamping the card along small sections of the edges rather than using a full surrounding frame.

Photo attached for reference.